deckeda wrote:
I can't disagree. But for ripping CDs to ALAC I also find that iTunes works pretty darn well for me. And it's got error correction on par with CDParanioa.
I was under the impression (after studying up on the subject on assorted audio forums) that for ripping CDs, the error correction on Itunes is not anywhere as robust as in XLD.
I just got through a project of ripping my 1200 CD collection to ALAC, and it included lots of $1 used flea market discs that were really beat up. With XLD, for those discs it would really take it's time, trying over and over with the damaged bits until it got a good rip, and then telling me in a log at the end which ones matched the "accurate rip" database, which verifies the bits in your rip are the same as the bits in other people's undamaged versions.
With Itunes, when I tried some of those same discs, it would retry the same damaged sections, but for some discs would then give up and move on, and when I would listen to the rip I would hear skips, clicks, pops, etc. This was with the error correction setting turned on.
So that was a problem for me, I don't want to a rip a disc with a program that is content to do an unsuccessful rip that results in skips, and not even tell me it had a problem.
For me the bottom line was that I preferred XLD since after I would do a rip, if it gave the message "all tracks ripped accurately (matches the accurate rip database), then I knew the rip was 100% error free and would sound perfect, without having to listen to an hour long disc carefully.
When you are ripping a large collection, you really want to know you are doing it right, the first time, and won't have to go back later and fix anything.
I still use Itunes for playback even though XLD did all the rips. Once they were all done I just imported all the ALAC files into Itunes.
Thanks!
